


Not Calm, but Bright

by the_wordbutler



Series: Motion Practice [6]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Also feelings, Alternate Universe, Christmas, Fluff, Legal Drama, M/M, motion practice universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil’s not sure what he believes in religiously, but he believes in in his family: his mother who taught him to cook, his father who taught him to play baseball, the sisters he stood up for in weddings, the nieces and nephews he held as infants.  </p>
<p>But he also believes in Clint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Calm, but Bright

**Author's Note:**

> Although this story takes place several months after the end of “Motion Practice”, there are no spoilers for that story contained in this one. However, there is some foreshadowing as to what occurred in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office between the end of “Motion Practice” (late September) and Christmastime. These events and others will be featured in the last two chapters of "Motion Practice," as well as its sequel (which debuts January 18). In the meantime, you do not need to know anything about that story—or, indeed, most of “Motion Practice” proper—to read this one. And you will not be spoiled.
> 
> Beta-read by the impeccable Jen, who is always more than willing to suffer my typos.
> 
> Also, a complete Coulson family tree is available in the endnotes.

It’s a three-hour drive from the airport to Sam’s farmhouse. The road twists and stretches through the subtle Midwestern hills like a gray ribbon among white snow-covered fields. The sky’s gray, too, occasionally spitting out heavy snowflakes that stick to the windshield of the rental car.

In the passenger’s seat, Clint naps.

Actually, Phil suspects he’s not _really_ napping. But out here, a good hundred miles from the nearest “big city,” the car radio can’t even pick up the Christmas station anymore, leaving them to either silence or the hiss-crackle of static. Both provide the kind of repetitive lull that new parents crave but lonely drivers fear, the kind that can easily bore you to sleep.

But every once in a while, Clint presses his cheek against a freshly-cold part of the window pane, and Phil thinks he’s just . . . taking it all in.

Even now, in the car and on the way to his sister’s, Phil can’t completely believe that Clint is with him for Christmas. He’d spent a week padding around the question, nudging his way in by asking what the Barton family traditions were—“You really think we have traditions?” Clint’d asked, eyebrows crawling almost to his hairline—and what he planned to do with his last few vacation days of the year. In fact, he’d still been three whole days from the question itself when Maria’d thrown up her hands at them in the break room.

“He wants to ask you to Christmas with his family,” she’d said, and Phil remembers how _warm_ his face’d felt.

Clint, to his credit, had blinked a few times. “Yeah?” 

When Phil’d elected to stare at his coffee instead of answering, Maria’d snapped, “Don’t be a baby,” and stormed out of the room.

He’d stared at the steam rising off his coffee like he’d expected the secrets of the universe to curl out of the dark liquid, only raising his eyes once the warmth on his cheeks’d receded under his collar. Clint’s mouth’d curved into this crooked little twist, though, and the warmth’d come rushing back.

“Yeah?” he’d asked again.

“Yeah,” Phil’d responded, and that’d—kind of been that.

In the center console, Phil’s cell phone chimes, dragging him back to the unwelcome gray-on-gray reality of winter in the Midwest. He glances down at the glowing screen and is just about to weigh his options—the only other car within _view_ is a wide-load semitruck carrying some kind of metal pipes, but he’s never sure about black ice in this part of the country—when a hand reaches out and snags it.

“Thought you were asleep,” he notes while Clint thumbs the screen unlocked.

“I nodded off for a while.” Phil can hear the places the sleep edges into Clint’s voice, darkening it and rounding out the corners. He’s never said aloud how much he enjoys the way Clint grumbles through the mornings, or how he always manages to look sleep-rumpled, even after a ten-minute doze on the couch. Like now, his hair sticking up in a dozen directions while he—

Clint snorts. “Sam wants to know if she should keep the cornbread hot,” he reads, and then pauses. “Your sister makes her own cornbread?”

“My sister’s married to a farmer. She literally makes her own _everything_.” Phil drops his eyes to the clock on the dash. “Tell her we’re twenty minutes out.”

“Meaning that we’re at least half an hour out,” Clint retorts.

“Tell her twenty.”

“And make the first words I say—type—to your sister a lie? Thanks, but I’m starting out in her good graces.” 

When they pass a billboard with lights—rare as those are along the back-highways of somewhere this bleak—Phil catches the remnants of Clint’s crooked little smirk.

If Clint minds the way Phil reaches over to rest a hand on his thigh for a few minutes, he doesn’t actually say anything about it.

 

==

 

“Oh god, this one’s gonna be lame, too, isn’t he?”

Samantha’s house at Christmas looks like something out of a Currier and Ives print and smells like an expensive candle from Bath and Body Works, not that Phil knows anything about that sort of thing. He spends a full ten seconds on the rug inside the front door, just . . . _absorbing_ the warmth all around him. There’s evergreen garland with red velveteen bows running up the banister, multicolored lights hanging around the windows, and a veritable mountain of presents in the place they’ll put the tree sometime in the next three or four days. He can smell something delicious on the stove—Sam’s award-winning chili, maybe, or homemade soup enough to feed an army—and it mingles with the smell of pine and baked goods.

And then, of course, Joey demands to know whether Clint’s “lame.”

Clint’s hardly inside the door when he asks it, their second suitcase (the one stocked with presents) trailing in snow and sidewalk salt behind him. Phil twists enough to _look_ at the man he’s brought with him— _his_ man, he allows himself to think in one private rush of pride. He’s in this beaten wool coat and a dark purple scarf, his face ruddy from the cold, but that’s not what Phil wants to catch.

No.

What he wants to catch is this _first_ moment of Clint in what’s slowly become the Coulson family’s home-away-from home, when the sights and smells of Sam’s world rush in to meet him. He watches the way Clint’s face shifts after his first breath inside the house, the way his eyes widen in almost-imperceptible surprise, the way he takes a second, deeper breath. There’s a sports game on in the living room—football, if Phil had to guess—and the announcers’ voices trip through into the foyer, but somehow it only adds to the whole effect.

“Close the damn door!” Sam shouts from the next room, and all three bodies move at once: Clint jerks to pull the suitcase the rest of the way inside, Phil nearly trips over the rug in an effort to find the doorknob, and Joey—

Joey’s thirteen, more legs and arms than _human_.

He reaches for the door, too, catches his foot on one of Clint’s, and—

“I’m not being responsible for a busted-up nephew,” Clint decides, catching a handful of Joey’s sweatshirt. Miraculously, everybody stays upright, and Phil thinks for a half-second that the glimmer in Joey’s eyes is admiration.

Maybe.

He scrambles away from Clint a little too fast, though, clearly more concerned with saving his teenage “street cred” than thanking the guy who prevented his face-plant. He brushes thick hair out of his face, then tosses his head until the hair falls into his eyes all over again.

Phil doesn’t miss being thirteen.

“Jesus, Joey, is this how you help your uncle bring his bags in?” Sam demands, bounding into the room like— Well, like Sam. There’s no living creature you can compare Samantha to, so much so that Phil’s given up trying; she’s tall and brash, with round hips and a rounder voice, and she smacks Joey in the back of the head hard enough that Phil can feel it in _his_ teeth. “You had two choices: help your dad with the firewood, or help your uncle with the bags. You picked this one, and now you’re staring.”

Joey turns Christmas-red. “Ma—”

“Upstairs!” Sam commands, and Joey ducks to avoid a follow-up smack. He grabs the two suitcases, mutters something that Phil thinks might be a _sorry_ , and then bounds up the stairs in twos and threes. Sam watches him the whole while, her dark eyes narrowed far enough to make Maria’s glares look like amateur hour, and Phil—

Phil’s not sure whether Clint’s rolling his lips together out of fear or amusement. Either way, he’s paused with his gloves halfway off to stare at the woman in front of him, and Phil . . .

Phil hopes that’s a _good_ sign.

“Kids,” Sam mutters, shaking her head as she turns around. She’s not moving any slower than usual, but for a few seconds, Phil feels like he’s watching her advance frame-by-frame. He can see every flyaway in her hair, every line around her eyes, every miniscule scar from the horrible bout of chicken pox she’d suffered through at age six, and his chest seizes at every last detail.

Not, of course, because of Sam herself. No, his heart feels ready to explode because of _Clint_.

He thinks Clint might feel it, too, the swelling of anticipation that comes with Sam turning to face them, because he’s still. Stock-still, almost as though the cold outside’s rushed in to freeze him. He’s clutching both his gloves in one hand, his coat halfway open and his scarf hanging limply. He’s gorgeous, wind-rumpled and still red-cheeked, and Phil battles down his urge to grab him by the scarf and kiss him breathless.

It’s a strong urge.

But not nearly as strong as the _relief_ that blooms in his stomach when Sam smiles.

Sam, like their mother and both their sisters, has a smile that overtakes her entire face. Phil’s listened to Clint try to describe _his_ smile, before—ending, usually, in an ode to the crow’s feet Phil’s learning to love—but it’s nothing like Sam’s. Her face glows, her cheeks softer and rounder from the warmth in them, and the lingering cold in Phil’s chest is replaced with _heat_.

It radiates down into the balls of his feet. He glances at Clint, catching the end of one of his nervous shifts. He shoves the gloves into his pocket and, slowly, offers a hand. “Uh, hey,” he greets, and Phil’s not entirely sure why Clint’s uncertainty warms him. “You’re Sam, right?”

“Yeah, we don’t shake hands around here,” Sam replies, and sweeps in to grip Clint in a bone-crushing hug. Phil bites the inside of his lip to keep from laughing aloud at the _look_ on Clint’s face, a wide-eyed shock that only subsides when Sam exclaims, “You’re still freezing!” and drags him closer. He hesitates, his arms caught at funny scarecrow angles, and catches Phil’s eyes.

Phil might not be laughing, but he can’t control his smile. 

But he’s apparently not expected to, because Clint softens immediately, his arms reaching around Sam to hug her back. “Hi,” he says, and the word, half-buried in the messy bun at the top of her head, mingles with her, “It’s so nice to meet you!” They linger like that for longer than is strictly polite . . . but is still at most _half_ the length of a usual Sam hug.

She releases Clint slowly, her hands gripping and then rubbing his upper arms like she wants to return the warmth to them, her smile bright as day. “And you!” she exclaims, and reaches for Phil. This hug’s more her usual style, desperately welcoming and _tight_ , and Phil grips her back. She smells like Christmas, as intangible a thing as that is: warmth and fresh-baked _something_ , apple cider and fresh-cut wood, all the scents that he’s come to expect from his sister the farm-girl.

He’s vaguely aware of Clint shedding his coat on the other half of the rug, but more aware of Sam murmuring, “You’re keeping this one, right?” He snorts half a laugh and presses his nose into her hair, trying to soak up _more_ of her.

It’s not an answer, though, and the way she smacks him in the arm proves she knows it.

He thinks she might ask again, louder this time, but then the house erupts into the kind of chaos that only ever exists on the farm. Somewhere in the back of the house, a door bursts open to excited shouting and scuffling. Joe’s voice—Joe Senior’s voice, that is, his brother-in-law instead of his nephew—carries over the ruckus, demanding that Will be careful with the firewood and Shannon close the door to the mud room. A pan clangs, someone shoves a chair, and Phil only realizes that Joey Junior’s back on the stairs when he shouts, “Uncle Phil’s here!”

The words ring through the house like a cattle call, and Sam barely has a chance to release Phil before the rest of the kids are on him. He’s aware in some vague, back-most corner of his mind that Clint’s stepped out of the way, but there’s no time to process that; Clara’s practically climbing up the front of his coat, Shannon’s ducking under his arm for a hug, and the crash in the living room’s promptly followed by Will skidding to a stop in the foyer with the rest of them. Will’s too old for hugs now, Phil knows, but he hoists Clara onto his hip and lets Shannon wriggle her face into his side.

It’s a lot, he knows, and he’s halfway breathless when he says, “Hi.”

“You’re cold,” Clara complains. 

“Pretty sure you’re the cold one,” he retorts. She laughs and presses her cold nose to the skin under his ear, and he shivers hard enough to shake her. The grin against his neck suggests that it _wasn’t_ accidental. “And you smell like farmyard,” he adds, which causes her to dissolve into a sea of giggles. 

Sam rolls her eyes at the lot of them, a sort of over-warm fondness trailing across her features, and it’s only then that Phil thinks to glance over at Clint. He’s holding his coat over one arm in a way that isn’t _quite_ casual, and there’s something wary about his smile. Phil considers for the first time what this all looks like to an outsider, Phil surrounded by wild-haired children with Coulson smiles. Clara’s all of six weeks older than Dot Barnes, Shannon has Joe’s wild Irish curls, and they’re—

They’re nothing like Phil, except in all the ways they’re _exactly_ like him.

“William Allen, I swear to _Christ_ that if that wood bin’s knocked over, there’s gonna be hell to pay!” Joe announces, thumping into the room louder than the entire group of kids did. It surprises Phil, sometimes, that his curvy sister with the wicked sense of humor ended up with a farmer for a husband—at least until he remembers how many black eyes she handed out to his preteen tormenters. Joe’s smile is easy and free, and Phil can see how obviously he’s trying not to laugh. Phil releases Shannon to offer a hand, but it turns immediately into a hug.

Sam wasn’t kidding about not shaking hands.

“We’ve got chili and cornbread on ‘cause we knew you’d be getting in a little late thanks to the snow,” he says as he pulls away. He lifts Clara when he does, and Phil realizes only belatedly that she’s snatched his scarf—a soft gray one that’d materialized in his office one afternoon and that Clint still claims to know nothing about. “I’m picking up your folks and Amy’s family tomorrow to keep you from making the trip.”

Phil nods his thanks—thanks, like handshakes, are usually assumed in Sam’s house—and then glances at Clint. He’s silent and still beside him, clutching onto his coat like it’s some kind of shield. The kids exchange nosy glances, complete with Joey Junior whispering something to Will, but Phil ignores it to catch Clint’s eyes. There’s something lost in them, half-spooked by all the activity, and Phil wonders exactly how long it’s been since Clint’s had a proper family holiday.

Or whether he’s had one at all. 

But the tension unspools from Clint’s shoulders and arms as soon as Phil places a hand in the middle of his back, and he spiders his fingers so Clint can _feel_ him through the thick weave of his sweater. “Guys,” he says, and he feels his own momentary nervousness creep up the back of his throat, tighter than he expects, “this is Clint.”

Shannon, who’s nine going on forty, tips her head to one side. “Your boyfriend, right?” she asks in a tone that suggests she knows the answer.

“His lame boyfriend,” Will mutters. Sam reaches to grab his arm, but he ducks out of the way.

Phil’s ready to correct him—after all, Clint’s far less “lame” than Phil himself, at least by preteen standards—when Clint kind of . . . snorts. It’s an almost-laugh, light enough that Phil suspects it’s only _half_ nerves. “Lame how?” he asks.

It’s enough of a challenge that the boys exchange glances. Phil isn’t sure he likes where this is headed, especially when he sees the way Sam’s trying not to laugh.

Will murmurs something under his breath, and Joey nods. “Do you play Halo?” he asks, thrusting his hands in his pockets. Pockets of a sweatshirt that Clint’d _rescued_ him with, in case anyone’d forgotten.

“No,” Clint answers.

The reaction from the boys is _immediate_ , complete with Will huffing out a scoff that Loki Laufeyson’d envy. “See?” Joey demands while both his parents send him exceptionally dirty looks. “Every time Uncle Phil brings a guy, he’s always—”

“Hey, wait a second,” Clint interrupts. He releases his coat from its death grip to hold up a hand. It’s steady, no nervous finger-twitching, and Phil feels his own shoulders relax. “You didn’t get the rest of the answer.”

The boys exchange glances. “What answer?” Will asks cautiously.

“The one where I tell you I don’t play Halo ‘cause there are, like, ten Call of Duty games that’re way better.”

There’s a grin pressing at the corners of Clint’s lips, miniscule and about as warm as Sam’s whole house, but Phil knows there’s an edge to it. Testing the waters, he thinks, and who better to do it with than a couple of wise-cracking preteen boys? Phil, for his part, rolls his eyes. “I knew your friendship with Wade Wilson’d be a problem sooner or later,” he offers.

Clint laughs. It is, officially, the best sound in the world.

“We have the new Black Ops,” Will pipes up without a second glance at Joey—which is probably good, because Joey still looks undecided on Clint’s supposed lameness. “We could take you.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Clint retorts.

“You wanna bet?”

And it’s not until Clint’s lips part with his comeback—probably scathing, since Phil’s heard some of his one-liners to Wade over his Xbox headset—that Sam throws up her hands. “Chili needs another half hour anyway,” she says, but the way her eyes spark when she glances in Phil’s direction proves it’s an absolute lie. “Take him downstairs, show him around the rec room. And if you break him,” she adds, jabbing a finger between the two boys, “you answer to _me_.”

“I don’t think they’re the ones you have to worry about,” Phil half-mutters. Clint’s elbow digs into his side, but he’s still grinning. It’s not entirely comfortable, yet—Clint’s secretly one of the nerviest people Phil’s ever met, he’s just incredibly adept at standing on his anxious energy—but it’s close. Phil shakes his head. “Go,” he says, “before I change my mind and make you sit through six months of Coulson-sibling catching up.”

Clint’s grin brightens, if it’s possible, but Joey and Will are already off, pounding towards the door to the basement. Shannon hesitates, caught between nosily following her brothers and Clint and nosily eavesdropping on whatever conversation overtakes the kitchen, but finally reaches forward and grabs Clint’s arm. “Come on, they’ll start without you,” she commands, and the beat of surprise on Clint’s face makes Sam and Joe both laugh aloud. 

Phil smiles at him and nods, again, the best encouragement he can manage without reminding him that, yes, he did agree to this. Clint lets Shannon tug him all of two steps before he twists back, catches Phil by the arm, and kisses him.

It’s a peck, barely a brush of lips at all, and it only _really_ catches the corner of his mouth. But his hand is wide and warm against Phil’s skin, and his smile—

Phil feels his face and neck warm from the heat of that smile.

When he’s gone, disappearing down to the basement behind Shannon, Phil turns to see both Sam and Joe watching him, eyebrows raised.

“What?” he asks, but he can feel the tips of his ears burning. He’s reminded briefly of the day he brought home his first girlfriend, and all the knowing _looks_ that came along with her.

“You kissed,” Clara offers, her cheek resting on Joe’s shoulder.

“We did,” Phil says, because he’s not entirely sure what else there is _to_ say.

“He’s a keeper,” Joe declares. There’s enough certainty in it that Phil can’t help but roll his eyes. “Just you wait, your Ma’ll be planning the wedding by the end of the week.”

“By the end of _tomorrow_ ,” Sam corrects, and then drags Phil toward the kitchen.

 

==

 

They wake up the next morning to the frigid grayness of a Midwestern winter, tangled together under the blankets and quilt in the guest bedroom. When Phil opens his eyes, he’s pretty sure Clint’s been awake for more than the last few minutes of groggy stirring; his gaze is alert and even, and the pillow creases on his cheeks are fading.

“What time is it?” Phil mutters, groping for his glasses. He vaguely remembers the evening before, sitting up at the kitchen table with Sam and Clint long after the rest of the house’d settled into bed, but he’s not sure how long he actually slept.

“Eight-thirty,” Clint reports. He drags a hand through his hair. “Think I smell bacon.”

“There’s no ‘think’ about it,” Phil replies, and he ditches his glasses entirely to thread his fingers through Clint’s hair and pull him back down into the sheets.

When they finally make it downstairs a suspiciously long time later—Sam quirks a smile at them when they emerge, and Joey blushes furiously and practically runs out of the kitchen—the table’s set for a breakfast feast, complete with eggs, bacon, two kinds of sausage, biscuits, and country gravy. Clint loads up his plate and rolls his eyes when Phil plucks a banana out of the fruit bowl, but then the house comes to life again: Sam reports the plans for the day, Shannon interrupts three different times to demand three different clothing items (“Just being nosy,” Sam reports glumly), and the boys tramp in and out of the back door, bundled in snow gear as they bring in extra firewood.

Joe’s already on his way to the airport to pick up Amy’s family and Phil’s parents, and Jenny’s family is has another five hours in the car before they arrive from Chicago. Sam’s day includes a list of errands a mile long, and no power in the universe will keep her from rattling off every last one of them.

She demonstrates this at the kitchen table, flopped into her chair with a cup of coffee clutched between her palms. Her hair’s a mess of fly-aways and there’re bags under her eyes, but Phil knows from years of experience that “exhausted” is really Sam’s element. “Then there’s Wal-Mart,” she lists off, and across the table Clint hides his smirk behind his own coffee, “and Farm & Fleet.”

At least, he hides it until he chokes on a mouthful. “Farm & Fleet?” he demands, and he can’t hide the laughter in his eyes even with his glasses on. “I didn’t think people actually went _in_ those.”

“They’ve got the best prices on snow gear and— Do _not_ make that face at me, Phillip!” Phil only barely manages to avoid her smack, and this time, Clint doesn’t even attempt to contain his laughter. Phil nudges his foot under the table, but the only response he earns is a retaliation nudge. “Not all of us have three Targets within a ten-minute drive.”

Clint blinks and sets down his coffee cup. “You know about his love affair with Target?” he asks.

Phil rolls his eyes. “I do not have a love affair—”

“Every time we’ve visited him since probably the beginning of _time_ , we have to make a Target run,” Sam reports. Her grin, Phil decides, is evil. Demonic, even, since her entire face turns conspiratorial as she leans her elbows on the table. “Out of diapers? Target. Need some dental floss? Target. If they had a menswear department, I _swear_ to you—”

“This is escalating to harassment rather quickly,” Phil interrupts, but it’s too late. Clint’s already laughing, freely, and nodding along with her. No amount of holding up his hands like he’s calling for order in the court—or kitchen—helps.

Eventually, though, after Clint’s eaten enough eggs and sausage to feed a soup kitchen and they’ve started a second pot of coffee just to make it through the day, Sam pushes herself away from the table and starts reaching for the empty plates. “The boys have a bunch of chores around here for Joe,” she explains, dumping dirty silverware into the serving bowl that _used_ to hold scrambled eggs, “but I’ll be taking the girls with me. There’s leftover chili and supplies for sandwiches in the fridge when Ma and the others get here, and—”

“Hey, don’t,” Clint says suddenly, and he bats away Sam’s hand as she reaches for his plate. It catches Phil off-guard, and he has to admit, he blinks as he watches Clint rise from the table. He’s in jeans and a worn purple sweater that’s soft to the touch, and for a moment, Phil can’t help but think Clint looks like he belongs there, on the farm, with the rest of them. “Lemme help out.”

“You’re company,” Sam chides, and reaches for another empty dish. “Company doesn’t—”

“You’re feeding me and letting me stay around,” Clint returns with a shrug. “Least I can do’s wash the dishes. Besides, Phil’ll help me.”

There’s a two-second delay in Phil’s surprised mind processing his reply before he manages, “Yeah, of course.”

“See?” 

Sam huffs a sigh and shakes her head. “I suppose the laundry detergent for those sheets in the guest room’ll cost enough on their own,” she muses aloud, and Phil almost snorts his last swallow of coffee. Clint’s face lights up, though, and before Phil can even push himself to his feet, dishes are being swept off the table and loaded in the sink.

He stands there for a half-second, just watching Clint, when he realizes Sam’s staring at him. When he raises an eyebrow, she mouths _keeper_.

He rolls his eyes, but then she’s laughing and sweeping out of the room.

“She’s right, y’know,” Clint comments once Phil’s standing beside him at the sink, steam from the hot water curling lazy paths in front of them. Phil glances over in time to catch the playful little quirk tipping the corner of Clint’s mouth. 

“About?”

“The amount of laundry soap she’s gonna need.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Phil retorts, and if he didn’t already love Clint—and he does, in case anyone’s possibly missed that—his laugh in those couple seconds would’ve won him over instantly.

 

==

 

“Westley Hamilton Coulson-Mitchell, I did _not_ just hear you swear!”

“Ernie, I swear to _god_ —”

“Mom, oh my god, did you see Penny’s iPod? That’s the iPod I want!”

“Is there _anything_ in this house that doesn’t have _meat_ in it?”

“Shannon started it!”

“I did _not_!”

Phil suspects he _perhaps_ did not adequately warn Clint about the realities of Christmas with the Coulsons.

It’s shortly before dusk outside, that quiet part of the evening where a hush falls over the orange-tinted fields of snow, but you wouldn’t know it from standing in Sam’s living room. The house is a cacophony of shouts and sound: feet pound up and down the stairs; voices shrill; doors are slammed, opened, and slammed again; bags and shoes and god knows what else are dumped and dropped for hugs.

Fate, it seems, conspired to make Clint’s first—and Phil’s stomach quietly seizes at the thought of how many more might come—Christmas with his family the loudest and most chaotic of all. Sam’d walked in with her endless bags of groceries not five minutes before Joe’d arrived with half the missing relatives, and before anyone could even move bags up to bedrooms or down to the basement, Jenny’s van pulled into the driveway. The result is this . . . insanity, kids running around and reacquainting themselves with cousins they’ve not seen for a year, siblings hugging, in-laws slapping shoulders and grinning, and all while Sam—the only sensible member of the family—hands out glass after glass of boozy eggnog.

Carolina, Jenny’s oldest step-child, attempts to spirit a glass off the tray Sam brought in and gets her knuckles rapped for it. 

Phil smiles at Sam as she passes and glances over at Clint . . . just in time to watch him throw back the glass of eggnog like it’s a shot of tequila served to him at a college party. He swallows several times and wets his lips after he’s finished, but not comfortably. No, as soon as he catches Phil’s eyes, he looks _guilty_ , like he’s been caught red-handed doing something he’s not supposed to. Phil forces a smile and tips his own glass back; he might not be able to finish it like Clint (it’s eggnog, after all), but he can take a few hungry swallows.

The corners of Clint’s lips twitch in something that vaguely resembles a smile, but then Shannon and Jenny’s son Earl start arguing, and the noise crests all over again.

He wants to say _something_ to Clint, reassure him or remind him why exactly they’re here, together, but every time his jaw moves, he finds he can’t actually make a sound. His fingers wander to touch Clint’s wrist, and Clint’s lips twitch again. It’s not the reassuring little gesture he figures Clint _thinks_ it is.

The thing Maria hadn’t understood—and the thing Phil hadn’t been able to explain to her in her whirlwind through the break room that day—was exactly how . . . active Phil’s family is at Christmas. He’d fought with the words for hours after Clint’d agreed to come with him to the farm for the holiday, but he’d never found the right way to _explain_. “You could just come for Christmas itself,” he’d finally suggested that night while he watched Clint climb into his pajama pants. Only Clint Barton, assistant district attorney and newly-minted muay thai green belt (thanks to the Wade Wilson Department of Strange Hobbies for that one), could make climbing into pajama pants _sexy_. “I’m usually there for a week or so, but you could fly in on Christmas Eve, I could pick you up from the airport . . . ”

“And miss a bunch of home-cooking and sister-charming?” Clint’d demanded. The warmth in his smile’d almost blinded Phil. “What, you don’t trust me with your mom?”

“It’s my mom I don’t trust,” he’d replied, and Clint’d laughed. Three steps later, Clint’s palms’d flattened against his sides, rough against his bare skin. He’d closed his eyes to the feeling of Clint’s thumbs drawing lazy shapes before he’d said, “It’s a lot of Coulsons.”

“I like Coulsons,” Clint’d replied, and the words had been _just_ close enough to the corner of his mouth that Phil didn’t bother belaboring the conversation.

But there’s a difference, Phil thinks now, about liking Coulsons and _understanding_ —

“And you!” a voice announces, and Phil jerks out of his thoughts just in time for his mother to sweep him into a soft, full-bodied hug. Her hair’s freshly curled and her holiday sweater just the right side of scratchy, and suddenly all other thoughts fly out of Phil’s head. He’s six years old every time his mother hugs him, his fingers bunching in her sweater and her scent—the same perfume she’s worn his entire life—floating around him, and it’s nearly impossible not to melt.

He’d hugged her in the doorway when she’d first arrived, but that’d been almost an assembly line of bodies, mechanical hugs that lasted mere seconds. He’d had Amy, her husband, both their boys, and then Jenny’s entire brood waiting for him.

This hug, though, can and _does_ linger.

“Hey, Mom,” he says quietly, and he feels the way she squeezes him when he says it. 

When they pull apart, his fingers uncurling from the flame-red sweater with the white snowflakes on it, he realizes Clint’s watching him. Their eyes meet, and Clint forces the world’s tightest smile before his eyes drop to his empty glass. Phil’s gaze follows, watching that rough thumb that feels so good on his skin trace along the glass’s rim.

His mother, not exactly one for subtlety, clears her throat. Phil feels his ears burn even as he snaps back to look at her. “Mom,” he stumbles, and her lips roll together in something he’s pretty sure he recognizes as amusement, “this is the— This is who I’ve been telling you about. Clint.”

It’s ridiculous, he realizes, to be an adult man in a relationship with another adult man and still feel like he’s introducing his mother to his prom date. She’s shorter than Phil and Clint both but built like all his sisters, no wisp of a woman. Strong enough to hug without worrying about breaking her, but then, Clint doesn’t hug her. No, he just raises his eyes and lets her examine him. It’s appraisal, pure and simple. Clint’s her fourth victim, not her first.

The other three are all married to Phil’s sisters. His mother’s never _squinted_ at one of his other dates the way she’s now squinting at Clint.

“I,” she says finally, her face softening enough that you can almost forget she’s well into her sixties and the mother of four grown children, “have heard _so_ much about you, Clint.”

“Uh,” Clint falters, glancing at Phil. Phil feels the tips of his ears warm, and, since he can’t think of any other reaction, he smiles. He’s never mentioned to Clint exactly how many stories his mother’s heard about their work, their friends, and Clint himself, and he’s not exactly sure how to start _explaining_ that in this instant. But whatever’s behind his smile besides embarrassment makes Clint’s eyes warm. Instantly, like a flame roaring to life. 

He glances back to Phil’s mother and offers a hand. “It’s great to meet you, Mrs. Coulson,” he says easily.

“Elizabeth,” she corrects. She seizes his hand and holds it between both her hands. It does not, however, turn into a hug, and Phil’s fairly sure relief flashes across Clint’s face when she finally lets go. “We were so excited to find out you were coming! I can’t remember the last time Phil brought someone to a big family event like this.”

For the first time since walking into the farmhouse, Phil wants to slink under the bed like he’s four and playing hide-and-seek. “Mom.”

“No, he should know this,” she retorts. She squeezes Clint’s hand, and Clint, damn him, grins like he’s about to learn a state secret. “Samantha and the kids got to meet that . . . _tuba_ player he was running around with—”

“Cello,” Phil interrupts. Clint swallows a laugh roughly enough that it comes out almost as a grunt.

“—and couldn’t stand him.” She shakes her head and _tsks_ like the retired schoolteacher she is. Phil takes another healthy swallow of his eggnog. “I’ve told him for _years_ that he needs to find another lawyer, settle down, get married, and—”

“Hey, listen up!”

In all of Phil’s—admittedly many—years, he’s never been so happy to hear Sam raise her voice as he is in that particular moment. His cheeks are warm, almost like he’s on his fifth cup of eggnog instead of his first. He watches his sister climb onto a chair (and then clutch Joe’s shoulder to keep from falling), fully aware of his mother’s eyes on him, tracing his every move. He remembers those looks from childhood, the knowing ones he could never escape.

She’d stared him down like that the Labor Day weekend he’d come out to his parents, too, watching him so intently while he worked on a law review article that he’d caved a full day and a half early.

Sam teeters, but Joe catches her with a big hand on her hip. “Look, I’m not gonna make this a big thing, because I know everyone wants to eat—” The kids, almost as an organized body, cheer. “—drink, and be merry.” Carolina cheers at _drink_ and her father, Jenny’s husband Alec, shoots her a near-murderous look. “I just want two minutes to say that I’m glad we’re all here together for Christmas. We don’t see enough of each other anymore, especially since Ma and Dad moved to Florida—”

“Sure, honey, blame it on our retirement!” Phil’s father complains from where he’s surrounded by grandkids.

“—but I like that we do.” She claps her hands together. “Jen and I’ll go down and set up the kid’s stuff downstairs in a couple minutes while Joe and the boys start the sandwich line going in the kitchen. Then, I figure it’ll just devolve into the usual disarray of drunken board games and off-key Christmas carols.”

“Only some of us are off-key,” Amy, Phil’s oldest sister, reminds Sam.

Sam rolls her eyes. “One state choir award and she thinks she’s freaking Celine Dion. Anyway, you all know where everything is, so— Oh!”

The noise is an afterthought, a little catch of breath at the end of her would-be speech, and Phil hardly recognizes it as meaning _anything_ . . . until he notices that she’s staring right at him. Well, technically, no, not at _him_ ; she’s staring at the spot on the floor next to him, between himself and his mother.

In short, she’s staring at Clint.

“And before anybody forgets,” she starts, a slow, shit-eating grin crossing her face. It’s a grin that spikes ice in Phil’s veins, one that turns the eggnog sour in his stomach, because he knows what’s about to happen. He knows Sam’s irrepressible good nature, the way she’s openly _incapable_ of common sense. As much as he loves her for it, now is not the time.

Because, right now, Clint still looks like a spooked shelter dog, ready to bolt.

“Phil’s actually brought _his guy_ home to meet all of us, which is pretty much open season on the both of them.” Sam’s smile is radiant, but Phil feels a little like she’s just stabbed him in the stomach. He raises his hand, tries to subtle make a throat-slashing motion, but she’s delightfully oblivious. “I’ve heard Clint plays a mean Black Ops, too. Joey thinks he’s the perfect guy, so Phil’d better put a ring on it.”

“Mom!” Joey howls in horror, and everybody laughs. Everybody except Phil, of course, who forces a smile as literally everyone in the room trains eyes on him and the man at his side.

The very quiet man at his side, who’s staring at his glass again.

Phil wonders if he can spike Sam’s coffee with ex-lax tomorrow morning.

The room breaks back into chaos, though, and whatever horrors he’s mentally wishing would rain down on his sister disappear into the usual mountain of sound. Both his newly-arrived brothers-in-law converge on him to shake hands and introduce themselves to Clint; Alec immediately chatters about work in a voice that’s too loud for the room, and Paul steers the conversation directly into tax law. There’re nephews and nieces who come and go, nosily butting into the conversation only to disappear again; then Phil’s dad joins, too, and everything’s just—activity. There’s the noise and energy of three conversations that all meander off in different directions, the constant scolding of children as they shove each other around, climb on furniture with shoes on, and attempt to steal spiked eggnog (“Carolina, I will have your Uncle Phil arrest you!” Alec threatens, proving once and for all that he absolutely does not understand how the law actually works), and it’s—a lot. 

It’s a lot for Phil, and he knows and loves every one of these people. He’s held most the kids as infants and stood up as a groomsman in all three of his sisters’ weddings. His father taught him how to play baseball, and his mother taught him how to cook. This is his _family_ , the environment he’s most used to.

It’s not Clint’s.

And as much as people talk to Clint, as much as they shake his hand and ask him questions, Phil catches him glancing again and again at his empty cup with the eggnog film along the side.

Joe calls everyone into the kitchen for their makeshift dinner of sandwiches and chips all of fifteen minutes later, and the group breaks up to wander into the kitchen. The brothers-in-law and his dad stop for second glasses of eggnog, and Phil breaks away from the crowd to surreptitiously remove an extra glass from Carolina’s grip.

“Your dad will kill you and then me,” he warns.

She’s a pretty eighteen-year-old with olive skin and pink streaks in her dark hair. She promptly rolls her eyes at him. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“No,” he agrees, “but I can suggest you wait until you’re in college in September and can’t get grounded.” He pours her eggnog into his glass. “Or that you be a little more subtle.”

She huffs and stomps away as much as anyone can when they’re wearing Hello Kitty Christmas socks. When he glances up, Clint’s standing in the doorway. He smiles softly at Phil, and Phil can’t help but smile back.

Which is why he’s surprised when, five minutes later, everyone’s been through the sandwich assembly line _except_ Clint.

The farmhouse is remarkably calmer when everyone’s eating, the noise level down to a dull roar. There’s a Christmas movie on in the living room that the younger kids are gathered around, and a group of the teens and almost-teens are sitting bizarrely on the stairs and watching one of the Chris Nolan _Batman_ movies on Westley’s laptop. It’s nice, he thinks, and turns to glance around the kitchen.

But short of Amy typing something on her Blackberry, there’s—nobody around.

“I have to meet him eventually, you know,” Amy remarks half-heartedly, and Phil smears mustard on the side of his hand in surprise. Of all his sisters, Amy’s always had the best luck reading his mind, because Amy’s the most like him; she’s intensely practical, career-oriented, and stubborn. She glances up once he’s silent for too long. “I’m the only one who hasn’t shaken Mr. Right’s hand yet,” she clarifies.

He jerks his head toward her phone as he wipes his hand clean. “Unplug for five minutes and maybe you’ll get a turn,” he retorts. “You run a bank, not the free world.”

“Banks _are_ the free world, baby brother,” she replies, but she does tuck her Blackberry into her pocket. Even in jeans and a sweatshirt from her alma mater, she looks fiercely efficient. She and Pepper Potts would probably be best girlfriends. “Seriously, where’s your boy?”

“I—don’t know,” he admits. He glances down at his sandwich and its sad pile of chips. “Probably watching the movie with the boys. They bonded yesterday.”

“He went outside,” another voice volunteers. Phil glances over his shoulder to see Penny, the youngest of Jenny’s step-children, wandering into the kitchen. She grabs a can of soda off the counter and shrugs. “He’s okay-looking. For, you know, your boyfriend.”

“What does that even mean?” 

“It means you’re pretty good at doing bland,” Amy points out.

“I’m not . . . bland.” Excepting, of course, the fact that Tony Stark routinely refers to him as exactly that—or worse. He watches Penny pop the top to her soda. “He say why he was going outside?”

She shakes her head. “He didn’t say anything,” she replies, her dark hair falling in her eyes. “Like, Will yelled after him about playing more Black Ops later and he just went straight out the door.” She pauses, can halfway to her lips. “Is he, like, messed up in the head or something?”

“No,” Phil returns sharply, abandoning his plate on the table to head toward the door. He only realizes after he’s grabbed his coat off the rack and pushed outside onto the porch that _he_ , right now, looks like the one who’s messed up.

It’s frigid outside, the kind of icy night that crawls into the bottom of your lungs, and Phil’s breath explodes in front of him in a dewy cloud. It’s snowing again, fat, lazy flakes that drift in the breeze. He shivers and tugs his coat closed, but he knows it won’t necessarily help; he’ll need a lot more than his slippers and winter coat on the front porch if he’s staying out here for long.

Not, of course, that he needs to. No, he spots Clint immediately, standing at the far corner of the porch. He’s wearing his shoes and coat, his scarf wrapped around his neck but his fingers bare, and he looks cold.

Cold, Phil thinks, and lonely.

He makes it all of three steps on the old wooden slats before Clint says, “I just needed a couple minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” Phil replies softly. The word’s almost a whisper, a secret between the two of them, but he can see Clint’s shoulders relax from where he’s still standing. He’s learned in the last eight months that, sometimes, this is the only way Clint knows how to cope. Sometimes, he needs to wall himself away until his mind stops spinning around rudderlessly. He’s suspects it’s like drowning without a lifeboat inside Clint’s mind when he’s this way; it’s balancing what he _does_ feel with what he thinks he _should_ feel until he finds equilibrium.

Phil wants Clint to be the man he loves, not the man Clint thinks he _should_ love.

They’re working on that. 

He shoves his hands in his coat pockets and slowly closes the distance between them until he’s standing beside Clint. Their shoulders almost touch, but not quite. Phil wonders whether Clint’s noticed how tall and wide he builds his walls from everyone, including Phil. Instead, he bumps his shoulder lightly against Clint’s.

Clint bumps back. “Look,” he says, his voice raw from the cold, “it’s not that I don’t like your family. Your family’s great. It’s just . . . ” 

He shrugs and shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything else.

“It’s a lot,” Phil offers, nodding. He wants it to be warm enough that it means something, but it feels— Empty, somehow. He thinks of the hundreds of times he’s sat across from the families of victims and offered his platitudes, and how helpless he’s felt every time. Because sure, it’s great to say that you know how much it hurts, but saying it isn’t the same as _understanding_. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and presses them to the porch rail, watching the snow drift down into the yard. “Believe it or not, what happened in there with Sam . . . That’s a _good_ thing. Proof that between Black Ops and the dishes, you tipped into the ‘approval’ category.”

Clint exhales softly and shakes his head. Phil wonders if he’ll do anything to fill in the silence, and for a moment, he’s quiet and still. Then, he presses his shoulder more fully into Phil’s, almost leaning against him, and shrugs. “We used to do holiday cleanup in the orphanage when I was a kid,” he murmurs. Phil glances at him and traces the worry lines on his face, that solemn seriousness that he knows doesn’t belong to the _real_ Clint. “The staff, they had this thing about—showing gratitude to ‘em, I guess. So on holidays, ‘cause it was their holiday too, we all cleaned up after the meals. To thank them.”

Phil presses his lips together and tries not to count the number of orphanage memories Clint’s shared with him thus far. He thinks he might be able to fill up a single hand. He opens his mouth and says nothing more than, “That’s . . . Well.” 

Because the rest of the words don’t actually come.

“Fucked up?” 

“Selfish,” Phil decides. Clint’s head jerks in his direction, and he shrugs lightly. Their shoulders whisper together, the fabrics of their coats catching, and Phil leeches as much of that heat as he can. “You were children. You’d lost your whole families. You deserved an actual holiday, not—indentured servitude.”

Clint snorts what Phil thinks is a tiny, bitter laugh. “Still better than most the holidays I had when my folks were alive.”

“And that still doesn’t make it right.”

There’s a moment of silence after that, no sound except the whisper of the breeze in the bare trees in front of the farmhouse. It feels like finality, like closing a book at the end of a chapter, except for Clint’s eyes. Because Clint is watching him in the cold and darkness, gaze trained steadily on the side of his face. 

He turns to look at him. “If I smeared mustard on my face, too, I quit,” he jokes lightly.

The seriousness in Clint’s face doesn’t crack. If anything, it intensifies. Phil watches his jaw work, and then watches his throat move when he swallows. “What’s it like?”

“You’re going to have to be slightly more specific.”

“Having these—giant holidays. With everybody.”

“It’s . . . ” Phil starts, but his mouth closes without his permission. He falls silent, his mind wandering through every possible description, but none seems accurate. No, nothing really captures the feeling of warmth and _rightness_ he’s always gotten from his family or the overwhelming joy of Christmas. He presses his lips together, worrying them into a line. They’ll be chapped and dry in the morning, but he’s not sure what else to _do_. 

“I had a professor in undergrad,” he says finally, acutely aware of the way Clint’s eyes are tracking over his face while he talks. “I’d needed one last GenEd and landed in this ‘modern religions’ class, and one of our assignments was to write about our personal belief system. I was twenty-two. Most my beliefs circled around keg parties and studying for the LSAT.” He’s bolstered—or at least, slightly bolstered—when Clint lets out a soft laugh. “But what I ended up writing about was how, every year, my family goes to church on Christmas Eve. Because I didn’t—I _don’t_ —know what I believe in, religiously, but I know I believe in all of them.”

He glances at Clint’s face. In the dark, it’s soft and open, like the walls are crumbling down.

“And if that’s all that believing in a higher power is, the—warmth and fullness of being surrounded by someone who loves you, then I know that feeling. I’ve had it my whole life.”

He expects some kind of—comeback, really, from Clint. He’s learned in the months since Clint stopped running away that Clint’s tongue is sharp and sly, as clever as Laufeyson’s and as quick as Stark’s, and he waits for Clint to overtake the silence with a crooked grin and a barb. Instead, Clint reaches forward and opens the unzipped flaps of his jacket, pressing his cold hands to the sides of his sweater. Phil shivers, but he takes the cue; his arms reel Clint in until their chests are flush, coat flaps nearly cocooning the two of them.

Phil tries to fill in the space between them, say _something_ thoughtful, but Clint seems to know he’s struggling. He tips closer, his face nearly in Phil’s neck, and murmurs, “I wish I could say the same thing.”

The words reach deeper into Phil’s chest than the cold. He inhales, breathes past it, and then presses his lips against the soft skin under Clint’s ear. “You’re getting to the point where you’ll be able to,” he whispers—not as a statement, but as a promise.

 

==

 

“I’m just saying,” Clint volunteers the next morning, standing in the living room with his hands on his hips, “if you’re gonna get a tree that big, you’re gonna need more than you and a couple skinny teenagers.”

There is not enough coffee in the world, Phil thinks, for this moment of his life. Because, currently, his boyfriend and farmer brother-in-law are shoving furniture and gifts around the room and unofficially measuring the spot where the Christmas tree will eventually stand. _Eventually_ because, of course, nobody’s bothered to buy it yet. No, it’s out in a lot somewhere, still bound up and waiting for strangers to bring it home, while Clint tips his head, squints, and—

“We are _never_ allowed to stand on the couch,” Joey complains.

His father rolls his eyes at him and crosses his arms over his chest. “It’ll fit,” he tells Clint for the third time. Or rather, for the third time since Phil heard the crash of a pile of presents falling over and walked in to examine the situation.

“That’s what she said,” Elijah, Jenny’s seventeen-year-old step-son, offers. Jackson, who’s a year-and-a-half younger than Elijah but belongs to Amy, snickers.

Phil takes a long sip of his coffee. “Do I get to ask what you’re doing?” he wonders aloud.

The grin proves that it’s the first time Clint’s noticed him since he came into the room, and the bolt of warmth that travels through his belly is almost embarrassing. He’d woken up in a rumpled but empty bed, and come downstairs to discover Clint outside on a ladder, helping Joe replace a string of Christmas lights that’d burnt out overnight. He’d grabbed his coat and crunched outside onto the front lawn.

The other brothers-in-law were already in attendance, Alec still in his pajamas. The sun glinted off his bald spot almost as brightly as it glinted off the snow. “I like this one,” he’d told Phil, raising his coffee mug in a perverse kind of salute.

“Heard that!” Clint’d called down from the top rung of the ladder. He’d leaned forward, his coat riding up and showing a tempting strip of bare back, and Phil’d felt half-obliged to cat call before the ladder’d teetered.

Joe’d barely caught it. 

“You won’t be able to like him if Joe kills him,” Phil’d pointed out once his heart rate dropped back to normal.

Clint’d laughed. “Say something to those two,” he’d returned. He’d pulled down the dead string of lights and tossed them in Phil’s direction. It said something about their relationship, Phil thinks, that he’d reached out and _caught_ them. “Joe asked for help and nobody else volunteered.”

Alec’d shrugged and taken another sip of his coffee. Next to him, Paul’d barely glanced up from his Blackberry. “Tennis injury,” he’d supplied. “Bad elbow.”

“If Amy really works eighteen-hour days, I’m not sure it’s a tennis injury,” Alec’d replied slyly.

Phil counts himself lucky that he has brothers-in-law he can stand.

One brother-in-law is crossing his arms, now, and watching Clint teeter where he’s standing on the couch. “He doesn’t think the boys and I can drag the tree in,” Joe explains when Clint does nothing but grin. “Never mind that we’ve been doing this for three years.”

“Yeah, but you said you used to put it in the corner. Smaller tree.” Clint sticks a hand into the air, fingers outstretched. Phil watches him, then quirks and eyebrow, and doesn’t move until Clint makes grabby motions like a greedy two-year-old. He waits until Phil’s in reach, grabs his shoulder, and jumps down; Phil’s not surprised when he stays close, hand still on his sweater. “I’ve lived in a lot of studio apartments,” he says, snagging the coffee mug out of Phil’s grip. “You gotta be smart about this kinda thing.”

“We’ve done it like this for years,” Joe points out. His arms tighten, like he _really_ doesn’t want to admit Clint’s right.

And Clint, because he’s also attending the Tony Stark School of Poking Beehives With Sticks, raises both his eyebrows.

“He recently maneuvered two mismatched armchairs from Goodwill into his office,” Phil says. He leaves out the _barely_ and the _after taking the door off its hinges_ because, well, there are certain details that do not lend themselves to placating large farmers. Clint finishes off the last of the coffee and hands the empty mug back to Phil. “If he’s wrong,” he offers, because Joe’s still looming over both of them, “you get the satisfaction of watching him sulk in the back of the pick-up.”

“Supportive,” Clint intones, but Phil can see the smile nudging the corners of his lips and eyes.

“Fine!” And it’s either a sign of Clint’s negotiation skills or Joe’s impatience that the man throws up his hands. “Get your coats on,” he commands to the clump of teenagers, and the three of them scatter. He waits until they’re out of the room to level a finger in Phil’s direction. “You’d better be here to string the damn thing when we get back.”

It’s the limpest threat imaginable, but delivered with just enough force that Phil bites down on his smile. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he says, and Joe grins at him before stomping out of the room. Not intentionally, necessarily, but because he is a lot of man in an old, wooden farmhouse.

He’s tipping his mug to check for any dregs—he feels like he needs to drain an entire pot of the watered-down stuff his sister _thinks_ provides caffeine—when he realizes Clint’s watching him. “What?”

“You’re not coming?”

The question’s neutral, almost bland, but Phil catches all the tiny details that follow it: the way Clint shifts his weight from one foot to another, the way his lips purse, the way his fingers tighten where they’re still resting on Phil’s shoulder. Unstringing lights while Phil’s asleep in the house is one thing, but venturing out to pick a Christmas tree with Joe and a couple of the nephews is another.

Phil presses his palm to Clint’s back. “They _want_ to spend time with you,” he says softly, a murmur only meant for Clint. They’re tipped closely enough together that they can almost-whisper, which is good; Penny, Carolina, and Will wander into the room clustered around Penny’s iPod, pause in the doorway, and share what Phil can only describe as a giggle.

Clint stills, almost like a spooked animal, but Phil just spreads his fingers. “My family’s pretty good at being honest,” he continues, ignoring the kids’ watchful eyes. “The kids especially. You think Jackson’d put up with you if he didn’t like you? He argued with Sam about whether she had vegan pancake mix.”

The little spark of light in Clint’s eyes is followed by a tiny, trouble-making grin. “Your one sister gave her kids some pretty yuppie names,” he says.

“Don’t I know it?” he retorts, and they share what he’s _sure_ the kids would term a sappy, stupid smile. But then Clint leans in, kisses him on the corner of the mouth—a precaution, Phil thinks, because of the kids; they’ve shared longer kisses in Phil’s open office, thank you—and steps away.

Which is how Phil comes to be sitting at the kitchen table, browsing work e-mails on his iPad, when his father says, “Phillip.”

It’s one word, but he’s simultaneously five and twenty-five at the sound of it, being scolded for stealing a book of matches (and burning himself) and praised for gradating law school all in one go. He sets down the iPad and looks up at his father, a man who’s somehow retained a full head of hair and who wears sixty-plus years of smiles in the creases of his face. 

Creases which are furrowed into frown lines, now. Phil wets his lips. “Dad?” he asks.

They’re mostly-alone in the kitchen, with Sam and his mom bent over the countertop and reviewing Sam’s perpetually over-complicated plans for Christmas dinner. Most of the kids are down in the basement, sprawled out over the air mattresses and sleeping bags that make up their beds for the week, and Alec and Jenny are out finishing the Christmas shopping that they never manage to complete before leaving for the farm. Amy and Paul are missing, too, but that’s unsurprising; banks don’t close for anything short of a documented national holiday, and it’s not yet the weekend. The world’s fortunes need their financial prowess . . . or something.

This leaves Phil and his dad, who lowers himself into a chair with purpose. He’s holding a coffee cup between his palms, but his eyes are trained stalwartly on Phil.

“I feel like we’re about to have the ‘are you sure you want to go to law school?’ conversation again,” he offers when his dad’s _still_ silent.

“No,” his dad replies, but then he can see it, the tiny twitch in his cheek that proves he’s actually trying not to smile. Phil hears Sam snickering from her place at the kitchen counter, and he mentally curses her. This is not the first—or the last—time he’s been conned by the Coulson family poker face. “I just wanted to hear more about this young man of yours.”

“ _Craig_ ,” Phil’s mother chides from behind him, but it’s already too late; his father’s grinning through the sound of his groan, and before he can even recover enough to formulate some kind of excuse, his mother’s sliding him a cup of coffee. She settles down next to him, followed closely by Sam.

“I’ve been set up,” he complains, but he takes the cup of coffee.

“What?” his dad demands, innocently. Not _real_ innocence, of course, but the same kind of wide-eyed innocence Darcy Lewis employs when she spills peppermint mocha on an important document. He’s never caved to Darcy’s puppy-dog look, much to her sorrow. He should really introduce him to her family. “I had this same conversation with your sisters when they brought their husbands home, you know.”

“I had to swear I’d still buy clothes at stores,” Sam offers.

“You wouldn’t know what to do with a sewing machine if it bit you in the ass,” Phil retorts. He’s halfway through a sip of his coffee when his mom pinches his wrist lightly. He chokes, but the way she narrows her eyes indicates that, nearly forty years later, she still objects to his bad language. He rolls his eyes. “And anyway,” he continues, because they’re all staring at him, “he’s not my husband.”

“The boys weren’t their husbands when your sisters first brought them home,” his dad notes.

“And most of them were dating for more than a few months, too.” He tries to sharpen the response, tries to— _force_ it forward, but it catches. Not that he’s in a hurry to pop proverbial questions or rent out a banquet hall, but because marriage’s been a popular topic in general over the past couple months. 

He should’ve expected this, he thinks, and grips his coffee cup a little tighter as he takes the next sip. Between bringing Clint home to meet his family for the first time, and the stories he’s told his mother, it’s only fair that—

An incredibly muffled version of the _Game of Thrones_ theme interrupts the heaviness of the silence, and Phil at least has the decency to fake a grumble as he pulls out his cell phone. “Work,” he says. It’s not technically a lie, but that doesn’t absolve him of the guilt he feels when he abandons his family to walk out into the living room.

“I need to talk to your boyfriend,” Tony Stark says in lieu of a greeting. Phil suspects that the only time Tony Stark uses a _greeting_ is . . . Actually, he’s not sure Tony ever uses a greeting. “As soon as possible, preferably yesterday.”

“Clint is out running an errand with my brother-in-law,” Phil replies. In the background, he can hear the tinny, reverberating sound of Christmas music playing from . . . something. He suspects the television, because Tony’s stereo equipment is state-of-the-art. “Didn’t you take the week off?”

“It’s three days before Christmas and you think I’m calling to, I don’t know, engage in witty banter about the state of implied consent for breathalyzer tests? I’m wounded, Coulson. Deep down, heart-of-hearts, wounded like the weakest antelope at the watering hole.”

He snorts what he’s ashamed to admit is a tiny laugh. “Does that make me the lion?”

“No.” Phil’s fairly certain the sound on the other line is Tony flopping bodily onto—something. The Christmas music continues, dim and almost indecipherable. “You’re no help,” he accuses.

“Why don’t you tell me what you need Clint for, and I can try to help?”

“I’m planning a New Year’s Eve Party.”

Phil blinks, frowning, and tries to count back on his fingers. “Ten days before the event?”

“New Year’s Eve parties are works of art, Coulson,” Tony returns, and Phil’s delighted that, for once, he can roll his eyes without Tony scowling at him. “Plan too far ahead, people expect fireworks and dancing girls and entire _bathtubs_ filled with jello shots.”

“I think you accomplished that one year.”

Tony ignores him with such ruthless efficiency, Phil wonders if he’s listening at all. “My problem is, I can’t come up with a good theme. ‘Cause I suggested literary greats to Bruce, but it turned into this thing about deerstalker hats, so now I’m thinking superheroes, but—”

“Tony.” Phil sometimes thinks that his three years of law school and decade-plus of practice really only served to train him for this, the care and feeding of neurotic appellate attorneys. Tony exhales in a way that is suspiciously huffy. “It’s three days before Christmas. Shouldn’t you be . . . decking your halls, right now?”

“You’ve met me, right?” Tony retorts, and Phil’s pretty sure the collection of shifting noises is Tony maneuvering into some kind of sitting position. He wonders whether it’s a sign of deteriorating mental health that he can picture exactly the positions Tony drops into. “Christmas for me is porn, booze, and a steak the size of my head delivered from one of my favorite restaurants. Lather, rinse, repeat.” He pauses. “Or maybe in a different order, eventually. ‘Cause sometimes, you need the booze _before_ the porn, with the steak as a—”

“Bruce made you buy a tree, didn’t he?”

And Phil might feel bad interrupting anyone else, but Tony is a special case. A surprisingly quiet special case, one who doesn’t immediately jump in to correct him. Phil grins and watches a neighbor’s pick-up slowly maneuver down the still-snowy country road. 

Tony remains quiet for an unprecedentedly long time. “It’s ten feet tall,” he finally says, and Phil ducks his head to keep from laughing. “Coulson, he bought _tinsel_.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Or I’ll die by tinsel.”

“Or that,” Phil acknowledges, but that doesn’t stop him from grinning, either.

 

==

 

“Sam ratted you out, you know,” Jenny says as they wrap presents the next day.

The kitchen table is a mess of paper, tape, ribbons, and bows, not that anyone but Phil and Jenny appreciate it. No, Phil miraculously grew up in a household where the only people who _liked_ wrapping gifts were himself and Jenny, his sleek-haired Christmas co-conspirator. She’s sleek-haired now, too, the chin-length bob moving as she nods her head to the Christmas music. In the living room, their parents, Sam, and Amy are busily hanging ornaments on the carefully-selected, carefully-positioned Christmas tree.

“You’ve gotta admit I was right,” Clint’d pointed out the night before, flopped across their bed in the guest room. He’d lost his sweater but not his jeans, and Phil’d watched him from his place in the middle of the floor. He suspects, sometimes, that Clint’s unaware of just how _good_ he is to look at. Luckily, he’s more than happy to remind him using hands, teeth, and tongue. 

He’d popped the button on his own jeans and pretended not to notice the way Clint’s eyes had tracked down his body. “Right about?” he’d asked.

“The tree.” He’d rolled his eyes, then, and Clint’d grinned. “Jackson and E.J.’d tried to lift it and almost fell over. Good thing I was around.”

“E.J.?” Phil’d repeated.

“Elijah. Guess there’s another Elijah in the junior class with him, so he started going by E.J.” And he’d only realized how long and _surprised_ his look at Clint was, eyes trained on his face and lips a little parted, when Clint’d frowned at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he’d said, and started to slide out of his jeans. “I just hadn’t heard that from Jenny or the kids, yet.”

“Yeah?” There’d been something soft in the back of Clint’s voice when he’d asked it, almost—eager in its earnestness, and Phil couldn’t contain his smile when he’d nodded. He’d watched Clint fight and lose against a grin. “Cool.”

“Cool,” Phil’d echoed, smiling until the bed dipped under his weight and Clint’d sighed at the feeling of hands on his bare chest.

He thinks about that now—Clint’s warm skin under his palms, Clint’s lips on his neck—and then sort of . . . clears his throat. “Ratted me out?” he asks, half-certain that the combination of Clint’s loud voice and paper-thin walls are the _real_ culprit.

“About taking a work call yesterday when they tried to ask you about Clint.” Jenny’s a pastry chef, known for baking ridiculous multi-level cakes that taste like heaven, but she delivers the line with a practiced ruthlessness. The scissors click as she sets them down on the table and levels a _look_ in his direction. “Running scared?”

Phil purposely pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs as he reaches for the tape. “You’ve discovered my secret trick of having colleagues call when I don’t want to talk about my boyfriend,” he retorts. “Now I need to fall back onto Plan B.”

“Faking your death?” she suggests, quirking an eyebrow.

“Anaphylactic shock.”

She purses her lips together to keep from grinning, but Phil knows the reprieve won’t last very long. Luckily, the _real_ reprieve comes seconds later when her twins, Earl and Ernie, burst into the kitchen through the mudroom.

“Oh my god!” Ernie—or maybe Earl—exclaims. He’s covered in snow almost literally from head to foot, and his cheeks are bright red from exertion. He’s panting, too, but in excitement.

The other twin starts to slip-and-slide into the kitchen, his snow boots too soaked to walk efficiently, and Jenny’s out of her chair in a flash. “Oh no, you don’t!” she announces. She catches Earl—or, again, he could be Ernie—by the hood of his coat and _shoves_ him back through the door to the mudroom. “You are not soaking your Aunt Sam’s kitchen because you want—” She pauses. “What do you want?”

“Dad’s camera!” Earl says.

“He wants to take pictures,” Ernie adds.

Jenny glances between them like she’s coping with expert grifters rather than two eight-year-olds. Phil grins as he adds a wrapped present to the pile; her years of raising Alec’s kids prepared her well for manipulative elementary-schoolers. “Of what?”

They both grin, terrifying toothy smiles that remind Phil of evil children from a Stephen King novel. “Clint totally just tackled E.J. like a linebacker!” Earl crows.

“He _what_?” Phil demands, but he knows the damage has been done; Jenny’s already trotting into the hallway to grab Alec’s camera bag.

“We’re playing football while the girls make snowmen,” Ernie explains, wiping melting snow from his forehead. He ends up smearing his whole face with water. “He was making a run and Clint grabbed him!”

“It,” Earl says breathlessly, “was _awesome_.”

Phil wants to demand details—such as why Clint thought it was a _good_ idea to dive-bomb a seventeen-year-old in a foot of snow—but then Jenny returns with the bag. “You tell your father that if he ruins this, Santa’s not bringing him a new one.”

“Right!” Ernie—or Earl; Phil really needs to learn how Jenny can tell the two of them apart—chirps, and then they’re both disappearing again. The back door slams behind them like a gunshot, and even though Phil’s still staring after them, his sister just shakes her head.

“If you ever start to want kids,” she warns him, dropping back into her seat at the kitchen table, “call me. I will list five very good reasons why you _shouldn’t_.”

He grins. “Do any of them have names?”

“All five,” she promises, and he laughs. They fall into a companionable silence, Phil unrolling paper to wrap some kind of My Little Pony playset for Clara and Jenny taping the loose ends on her package. She sets it aside, stacks the Gary Paulsen books that Santa intends to bring Westley on the table, and then says, “He’s a good one.”

“Who?” Phil asks, reaching for the scissors.

“Clint.”

He nearly knocks his entire wrapping project—scissors, paper, pony playset—off the table, but when he glances up, Jenny’s just . . . watching him. Her eyes are sharp and shrewd, as smart and even as any other of the Coulson girls, and Phil feels his stomach seize. He can dodge Sam’s questions with humor and avoid Amy until she sits him down and asks him questions at point-blank range—and she will—but Jenny—

Jenny raised three children who aren’t her own. Her poker face is unbeatable.

“He just tackled your son into a snowbank,” he points out.

Her lips twitch, but she doesn’t smile. No, instead, she holds his eyes, her entire _manner_ completely steady. It’s unnerving, in a way, that the sister who ices baked goods all day is the sister who can stare him down. He thinks, not for the first time, that she could give Laufeyson a run for his money. 

“You should marry him,” she says finally.

Phil rolls his eyes. It feels like a theme of the last three days, the question followed promptly by his eye-roll, and he attempts to cover his annoyance by sizing and then cutting the wrapping paper. “You do all remember that I only started dating him in . . . July? Maybe?”

It sounds—defensive, he realizes. He’s reminded of Clint and his bricked-up walls, the impediments he builds between himself and the people who want to love him. He stares at the sparkly green paper for a couple seconds too long and then drops the roll on the floor. “It’s—early,” he says, well aware that Jenny’s waiting for him to say more.

“Phil.” She’s only two-and-a-half years older than him, but he feels sometimes like she’s lived a lifetime more; he raises his head and she’s watching him with those too-even eyes. He forces a tiny smile at her, something to break the tension, and she smiles back. It’s warm and full, and a sure sign that he’s fighting a losing battle. “I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve brought somebody home who made you _smile_ ,” she informs him, and he knows from the warmth climbing up his neck that she’s right. “Seriously. You’re open around him. Hell, you’re even _you_ around him.”

“As opposed to someone else?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

“As opposed to the quiet, bland, unfunny Mr. Coulson.” He reaches for the tape, but not before he catches the knowing little glint in her eye. “As long as I’ve known you—”

“You mean my entire life?”

“—you’ve had this . . . switch. It’s like you work really hard at being ‘Assistant District Attorney Coulson’ and then suddenly reach a point where you say ‘screw it’ and start just being _Phil_.” He picks up the playset to turn it around, but suddenly Jenny’s hands are on his. They’re warm and soft, deft hands with short pink fingernails, and he glances up at her. “You have never once brought home a boyfriend that you’ve bothered being Phil around.”

There’s an unspoken end to that sentence, one that he suspects goes without saying, but that somehow doesn’t still his lips. “Until Clint?”

“Until Clint.” She squeezes his hands slightly and then releases, reaching for the scissors instead. “And since I like having my brother around instead of that lameass lawyer he pretends to be, I’d like you to keep this one. Besides,” she adds, cleanly snipping a square of paper off the roll, “didn’t friends of yours just get married a couple weeks ago?”

Phil’s almost through taping the end-flaps on the playset shut, but the comment’s enough to make his whole body freeze. The carefully-folded flaps unravel as he levels the darkest glare he can manage at Jenny. 

To her credit, she blinks before asking, “What?”

“If you _ever_ compare Clint and I to those two again,” he informs her coolly, “I will buy your eight-year-olds drumkits.”

Jenny laughs and shakes her head. “They can’t be _that_ bad,” she replies.

“Yes,” he returns, flicking a miniature Christmas bow at her, “they can.”

 

==

 

“You _have_ to finish,” Shannon whines, and it’s the least-charming sound in the history of human sounds. 

The house is quiet and dark, now, and Phil knows without anyone needing to tell him that the kids should all be tucked into sleeping bags and drifting off to dreamland. Honestly, Phil feels the same, almost bone-tired from all the day’s activities, but there are two more pages left in the book and a promise _is_ a promise.

He and Jenny’d spent another hour on the Santa presents before the football players and snowman-creators all tromped into the kitchen through the mudroom, covering the floor in slush and demanding buckets-full of hot-chocolate. Phil’d helped strip the kids out of snowsuits while Jenny and, eventually, Sam, filled pans with milk and put them on the stove for cocoa. Clint’d been one of the last people in, and Phil’d stopped gathering up dropped hats and mittens to watch him; he’d deposited Clara on the mat and started helping her with all her zippers and buttons, chattering at her all the while. By the time Phil’d managed to look somewhere else, he _knew_ Clint’d caught him spying, and the rush of heat climbing up his throat and warming the tips of his ears returned when Jenny quirked an eyebrow at him.

Clint, at least, didn’t point out Phil’s stare. No, instead, he’d come up behind Phil, caught him by the hips, and shoved his cold nose and lips against the back of his neck. His jeans were soaked through, but his sweater, protected by his coat, was cool and fuzzy. Phil’d shivered slightly in his grip.

“Hi,” he’d murmured, breath tickling under the collar of Phil’s shirt.

He’d pressed his palms to the back of Clint’s hands as a reply, and smiled a little at Jenny’s triumphant little grin. His sisters, he’d decided in that instant, were evil.

But both she _and_ Sam kept their mouths shut when he’d twisted his head for a kiss and then shaken Clint off, saying, “You’re no use to me if you die of pneumonia.”

He’ll hear about it later, he’s sure.

When he’s quiet too long, Clara reaches over and turns the page on his behalf before nuzzling her face back against his shoulder. The flickering Christmas tree lights dance across the page, and the kids tip into see the illustration: Santa, fat and jolly, placing tiny wrapped packages in a long, striped stocking. Two of the stockings are already bulging, and a fourth is next on his agenda, but he’s frozen in time while two wide-eyed children stare at him from the doorway.

“‘He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,’” he reads, and Shannon—who just two hours ago declared she’d grown out of reading with Uncle Phil and wanted to play Mario Kart with the older kids downstairs—crowds Ernie and Earl to get a better look at the picture on the page. “‘And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk. And laying a finger side of his nose—” Phil demonstrates, as he’s done every year since Jackson was a toddler, and all four of the youngest kids mimic him. “—and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!’”

The twins grin at each other as Phil turns the page, but a creak in another part of the house distracts them. A handful of footsteps later, Clint’s standing in the doorway to the living room, smiling softly. He’s already in his pajama pants, but then, so is Phil. There’s something immediately comfortable it, though, warm and familiar, and Phil can’t help but smile when Clint shoves his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt.

“Mario Kart marathon over?” Phil asks. They’d attempted to sit with his sisters and parents after dinner, but the older kids—mainly Joey and E.J., with a little help from Will—had _begged_ Clint to come down and play with them. 

Clint shakes his head. His hair looks simultaneously blonder and darker in the dim light from the tree. “Thought I’d see what you were up to.”

“Here!” Shannon announces, shifting around. Phil thinks for a minute that she plans on draping herself over the twins, but instead, she hoists herself to sit on the arm of the couch. They shuffle around awkwardly, Earl’s leg draping over Phil’s and Clara practically settled against him like an infant, until there’s enough room on the loveseat for Clint to squeeze in next to Phil. They end up pressed together, almost levered in by the kids, but Clint’s smile is proof positive that he doesn’t mind. He drapes an arm around Phil’s shoulders. When he leans in close, Phil can still smell the snow on him from earlier.

“‘He sprang to his sleigh,’” he reads, acutely aware of how close Clint is, how carefully he’s watching, “‘to his team gave a whistle. And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle. And I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight . . . ’”

He pauses, there, the story frozen on the image of Santa in his enormous red sleigh, the reindeer disappearing into the dark of a cold winter’s night. The kids all know why he’s pausing—he’s done it this way for fifteen years, no reason to stop now—but Clint _doesn’t_. Phil glances over to see him watching as closely as any one of the kids, his breath caught and his eyes expectant. 

There’s one brief, painful second where Phil wonders whether Clint’s ever read _‘Twas the Night Before Christmas_ before.

But the pause is meant to be short, expectant but not _eternal_ , and Phil smiles gently. He knows his best Santa voice still leaves a lot to be desired, but that doesn’t keep him from his most dramatic: “‘Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!’”

All four kids beam at him, their grins brighter than the sum total of the glimmering lights in the room, but none of their smiles compare to Clint’s. Clint’s smile is like the sun, warding off all the darkness and shadows that lurk in the corner of the room, and even as Phil kisses his nieces and hugs his nephews, he’s aware of that light. Shannon, Earl, and Ernie all wave at Clint as they shuffle sleepily out the door, pajamas trailing behind them, but Clara—

Clara climbs off Phil’s lap and practically falls onto Clint with the force of her hug.

Clint freezes for a half-second, caught both by surprise and two tiny, fierce arms around his neck, but then he reels her in and hugs her close. Phil watches until the tide of emotion overtakes somewhere soft in the center of his stomach and he _can’t_ watch anymore. He closes the book while Clara murmurs her goodnights and kisses Clint on the check, and watches her back as she wanders out of the living room.

The basement door creaks when it closes behind her.

“They’re good kids,” Clint says quietly, his voice almost—hesitant, somehow. Phil raises his head in time to see Clint twist his hands together. His elbows are braced on his knees, his entire body tipped forward. Suddenly nervous, Phil thinks, like he’s afraid he’s interrupted some important family ritual.

“They love you,” he replies without thinking, the words dropping off his tongue like he can’t control them. It’s not a word he uses lightly, and Clint knows it; it took ages to string together the phrase _I love you_ for the first time, and he still saves it. He knows it’s not a fixed commodity, his and other people’s love for Clint, but he likes holding it close.

He likes saving the word for times like this, when the Christmas tree is bright and they’re alone in the living room.

Clint meets his gaze carefully, like he’s expecting to see something other than Phil’s smiles and soft laugh lines. “You think?” 

“I know.” He presses his hand to Clint’s thigh, a gesture that’s meant to be soft and reassuring, but Clint catches his arm and pulls him closer. Phil’s nose nudges Clint’s cheek and then they’re kissing, almost accidental in its clumsiness. Except the way Clint’s tongue traces the shape of his lower lip isn’t accidental, and neither is the way he sighs, open-mouthed, for more. There are eleven nieces and nephews in the basement, three sisters and his _parents_ upstairs, and for the first time in his life, Phil doesn’t care. He isn’t concerned about whether they’ll catch him making out with Clint like they’re both teenagers, or how far his t-shirt rides up when he swings a leg over and actively straddles Clint on the loveseat. 

He’s never worried that they’ll judge him, exactly, but he’s always watched himself anyway. That extra degree of care because, well, he’s never had what his sisters and parents all had. He’s never felt _certainty_ with someone he’s brought home.

Clint’s hands press under his t-shirt, and whether he means to or not, Phil moans into his mouth. 

He’s never felt certainty before Clint, and now he drowns in the feeling. 

Well, the feeling, and Clint’s touch.

 

==

 

Amy knocks back the last swallow of her bourbon, sets the glass on the table, and draws a card from the deck. Her long hair is braided down her back, but her hoodie is unzipped, revealing the flower-patterned camisole underneath. It’s as casual as Amelia Coulson-Mitchell _ever_ gets.

She taps her card on the table and then slips it into her hand. “Time to own up,” she says simply.

“It’s called ‘knocking,’ Amy,” Phil replies. 

She raises her head. “What?” she asks. When he nods to the cards in her grip, she rolls her eyes. “God, Phil, no. Not about gin. I am _losing_ this round of gin.”

By all accounts, they should be in bed. Actually, no, not just in bed; by all accounts, they should be absolutely exhausted, worn down to stubs from running around all day. The rest of the house is hushed aside from the noises of the kids and Clint watching Christmas movies in the basement; their parents, siblings, brothers-in-law, and Paul all snore away in beds upstairs. But Sam—bedraggled and overwhelmed from a full day of child-wrangling and meal-prepping—had begged one of them to stay up past midnight and then pop the slowly-thawing turkey back in the refrigerator.

Phil should’ve known Amy would find the booze and a deck of cards.

The day before Christmas Eve, just like every day before Christmas Eve in Phil’s memory, had been stacked with a thousand different activities. The tree’d needed the finishing touches, the stockings for all the nieces and nephews—plus, of course, for Phil, his sisters, his parents, the brothers-in-law, and even, as an early present from Sam, for _Clint_ —had to be unpacked and hung along the mantle and wall, and the pastry dough for all the pies needed mixed and refrigerated. Phil and Clint’d thrown in whatever help they could, wrapping straggling presents that’d been forgotten, wrangling kids who tried to _shake_ the presents, and producing literal pots of macaroni and cheese for lunch. At one point, Phil’d glanced up from where he’d been digging through the fridge for bacon bits to find Clint squinting at the familiar blue Kraft box, muttering to himself about the math to quadruple the recipe.

There’d been cheese powder smeared along his jaw, and his hair was sticking up from running hands through it.

Phil’d abandoned his bacon-related quest to kiss Clint until one of the pots boiled over.

After lunch, they’d embarked on a familiar family tradition, filling cars and trucks for the trip downtown to watch the annual Christmas parade. Clint and the three kids who’d piled into the back of their rental car—E.J., Joey, and Will—argued about the relative merits of superheroes the entire fifteen-minute drive, and Phil’d bitten back a smile.

At least, until E.J.’d called Superman _a super-asshole_.

Then, Phil’d joined in on the conversation.

They’d stood on the sidewalk in the cold, the sun distant but bright as it warmed the snow still clinging to the eaves of buildings, and watched the usual display: the mayor rode on the back of a pick-up decorated with lights, ornaments, and bells; three horses with ridiculous fake antlers tromped down the street and accepted carrots from random children; the church preschool class, Clara included, wore plastic angel’s wings over their snow suits and threw glitter while being led in off-key Christmas songs. Bagpipers played “Amazing Grace”—“Not a Christmas carol,” Clint’d groused, and Phil’d nudged his shoulder while he grinned—the high school marching band followed with a clumsy version of “Sleigh Ride,” and Santa trailed on a tractor. He’d thrown chocolate coins into the crowd, and Phil’d caught himself smiling a little too hard when _Clint_ jerked like he wanted to scrabble for the candy with the kids.

The family’d broken up a bit, after that, the kids split between wanting to go on a hayride or wandering downtown and admiring the Christmas windows. Clint’d declared the former “too damn cold,” so they’d supervised the latter with Amy and Paul, drifting from window to window along the street. Carolina’d snapped pictures of every animatronic Santa and singing Christmas angel, Penny’d dragged Jackson and Westley ahead of the rest of them like a magpie, always attracted to shiny things, and Earl—

“Kid, that one’s been stepped on,” Clint’d informed him when he’d picked yet _another_ abandoned chocolate coin out of the snow. Earl’d tried to dance away but Clint was faster, plucking it out of his hands. “I’ll buy you a bag of the things if you stop eating them off the ground.”

Earl’d narrowed his eyes. “Two.”

“None,” Clint’d suggested, and it’d taken all of ten seconds of eight-year-old posturing before Earl’d reluctantly agreed to just _one_ bag.

Clint’d looked over after that, the coin shoved into his coat pocket and his nose red from the cold even as his whole face was alight with a grin. Phil’d smiled back at him and reached over to straighten his scarf, not because his scarf’d needed straightening but because he’d wanted to touch him. He’d wanted to _kiss_ him, too, standing on the sidewalk in the cold, but then Carolina’d groaned, “There isn’t mistletoe here!” and they’d both laughed.

Amy’d twisted to look back at him. “You’d think they’d get over the ‘cootie’ thing once they turned eighteen,” she’d commented lightly.

Phil’d shrugged. “You’d think,” he’d echoed, but then Clint caught his arm and dragged _him_ after the kids, too.

They’d all gathered at a local diner for dinner, filling up three tables and laughing through a meal of burgers, sandwiches, fries, and onion rings, and every time Phil’d glanced over, Clint’d been smiling. 

In a lot of ways, it’d been one of the best days of his life.

But presently, Amy’s watching him across the table, her lips pressed into a thin, knowing line. “What am I owning to, then?” he asks. He casually reaches for the bottle of bourbon, but Amy recognizes the stall and slides it out of his reach. He rolls his eyes. “Are you twelve?”

“When I was twelve, I could kick your ass,” she retorts.

“Or,” he replies as he draws a card, “I let you win.”

The queen of diamonds doesn’t fit into his hand anywhere, but he delays anyway, thinking Amy might drop the subject. But Amy has three advanced finance degrees and is the region manager for a major bank. Amy’d argue with an armed gunman if she thought he was wrong. He shakes his head and discards the queen. “The Spanish Inquisition’s getting old,” he tells her.

“You bring home a guy for the first time in—god, what, five years?—and you’re bound to get the inquisition.” Amy draws and then immediately discards. “You wouldn’t’ve brought him if he was a convenient piece of ass.”

Phil pauses halfway to drawing his next card to frown at her. She’s pouring herself another glass, two fingers of amber liquid that dances under the kitchen light. “When have you known me to even _engage_ a ‘convenient piece of ass’?”

“I’m sure it’s happened once or twice,” she returns, sliding him the bottle. “Lonely at a law conference, horny at a hearing, moaning over mo—”

“Did you script these?” Phil interrupts.

Her lips curve into the slyest of little smiles. “I just mean,” she says, folding her cards together and setting the stack in front of her, “you’d never bring him if you didn’t like him.”

“Of course I like him,” he returns. He rolls his eyes just for effect, like Amy’s suddenly morphed into the stupidest of his sisters. “First rule of dating: don’t date someone you don’t like.”

“Phil.”

It’s one word, but it’s controlled and even, and Phil’s reminded suddenly that Amy does, in her own way, run the free world. He pours himself another drink and finishes his turn at gin—the card he draws is even more useless than the queen, and he discards it immediately—but Amy’s still watching him, her eyes never lifting from his face.

He wonders how many times she’s leveled the same kind of look across the boardroom table.

Sighing, he folds his own hand. “You met Paul at your thesis defense, right?” he asks, and reaches for his drink.

It’s not an answer to the underlying non-question, the thematic _So what are your intentions with Clint?_ that’s run through the last several days, but Amy nods anyway. “We showed up at the same time,” she says with a shrug. “He was running early and I was running late, and we argued about who should go in and explain the situation. By the end of the two-minute conversation, I wanted his phone number.”

Phil nods and, slowly, wets his lips. He can’t count the number of conversations like this he’s had with Amy—conversations in the dead of night over drinks stolen from his parents’ liquor cabinet—but somehow, this is the hardest of all of them. “I’ve never really had an experience like that,” he says.

“Which you’ve said a hundred times,” Amy points out.

“Right.” He tips his glass and watches the bourbon slide from side-to-side. “And then I met Clint.”

Even without looking at her, he can feel Amy’s surprise, imagine the way she’s raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “Really?”

He nods again. “I— It’s like from the first time I saw him in the hallway at work, I wanted to know more about him. I wanted to . . . unravel him, discover everything _underneath_.”

“Of course you did.” It’s said almost sarcastically, a scoff embedded in the back of Amy’s tone, and he looks up in time to catch her rolling her eyes. “You’ve seen the guy, Phil. Hell, you’ve seen him naked. He’s _incredibly_ good-looking.”

“No,” he says, and Amy frowns at him. “I mean, yes, he is,” he amends, holding up his hands, “but that’s not why . . . ” He shakes his head. “So many attorneys walk into that office and immediately carry themselves like they’re the smartest person in the building. They’re cocky and over-confident, impossible to work with. And, yes, some of them grow out of it, but some of them—” Stark, specifically, but Phil doesn’t say that aloud. “—don’t. But Clint always treated it as a . . . gift. He was smart and savvy, he _knew_ the law even from his first day there, but he always acted as though that job was the best thing that’d ever happened to him.” He catches himself smiling softly and glances back down at the drink. He’s not thirsty, exactly, but he can imagine what Amy’d see in his face if he glanced up. “He still does.”

Amy’s quiet for a long couple seconds before she says, “And you fell in love with him for it.”

It’s not a question.

“Yeah,” he answers, “I did.”

She’s smiling when he raises his head, smiling without any kind of judgment, and silently picks up her cards. He watches her hands as she draws off the deck, studies her long fingernails and her wedding ring, but she doesn’t mention Clint again. No, he’s passed whatever test she’d set out for him, and now the status quo is resumed.

She finishes her bourbon and then drinks Phil’s, but true to her prediction, she loses the round of gin.

It’s after two when they finally pack up the cards and call it a night, the turkey returned to the fridge and the house almost deathly quiet. No one, not even Clint, has emerged from the basement in hours, and Phil kisses Amy on the cheek before he slips down the darkened stairs. The soundtrack of _something_ is looping the same twenty-odd seconds over and over, a sure sign that the DVD’s finished playing but nobody’s turned off the television. He expects that Clint’s struggling to fish a remote control out from between couch cushions or extract himself from a dosing Clara, groggy and definitely ready for bed.

He should’ve known he’d be wrong.

The large, open area of the basement is dark except for the television, the repeated frames of Tim Allen as Santa Claus casting odd shadows across the floor. Most of the kids are already sprawled out on whatever flat surfaces they can find—air mattresses, the recliner, and, in Earl’s case, halfway inside Clara’s plastic playhouse—but there’re still a handful of bodies tossed across the couch. Ernie is sprawled across Shannon, his mouth hanging open and head tilted back, and Phil’s sure they’re both going to be sore in the morning.

But occupying the other half of the couch are Clara, Westley, and Clint, the three of them bundled together under a Batman sleeping bag that must belong to one of the boys.

Phil stands there for long minutes, just taking in the sight of them all: Clint with one arm holding Clara against his chest and the other stretched along the arm of the couch, his sock-covered feet propped up on the coffee table and his hair at a thousand ridiculous angles. There’s nothing worried or nervous in his body language, now. He’s languid and beautiful, his lines all smoothed out and his face placid in sleep.

Three nights ago, he’d rushed out of the house because the presence of strangers’d overwhelmed him.

Now, when Clara stirs, he pulls her closer until she settles.

Phil realizes in that moment that he didn’t fall in love with Clint because Clint treated his job as a gift. No, he fell in love with him because he treated his _life_ as one.

He walks over to the television and turns it off, but not before he steals one more glance at the group of them. Because then, that’s the picture he can go to bed imagining, Clint sprawled out with his family like he belongs.

 

==

 

They’re getting ready for church the next night when Clint comments, “I think your family wants us to get married.”

He’s half-naked when he says it, his hair still wet from the shower and his undershirt hardly hiding the ridges and valleys of his chest and stomach, but that’s not the part of the equation that makes Phil’s mouth dry out. No, when he twists away from the mirror to stare at Clint, it’s the _words_ that grind themselves into his stomach and refuse to let up.

“What?” he asks, like maybe he’s heard it wrong.

They’ve had a good day, simple and lazy, filled with pizza, board games, and laughter. Phil’s phone’d started ringing around noon and then hadn’t stopped, inundating them with Christmas Eve greetings from all their friends. Thor’s booming voice promised that his entire family—“Including the lovely Jane and my brother!” he’d roared—wished them a joyous Yuletide, Bruce’d apologized for Tony and spent twenty minutes chatting with Clint about New Year’s Eve parties and appropriate costuming, Natasha’d texted pictures of what Phil suspects was Pepper’s Christmas tree, and Dot’d recited almost _all_ of the annual Rogers-Barnes Christmas greeting before veering off-script and talking about ponies and dinosaurs. Darcy’d activated FaceTime and launched into a nearly-painful version of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” that’d made Clint and all the kids playing Monopoly with him laugh until they cried, and Wade Wilson—

“‘Dick in a Box’ is not a Christmas song!” Clint’d shouted at a text message.

“I don’t want to know,” Phil’d returned, and promptly left the room before Clint’d forced the message on him.

It’s dark and gray, now, the snow starting to drift down in optimistic clumps of flakes, but Phil’s not focused on the warmth of the day and the cold of the evening. Instead, he’s focused on Clint, half-naked and beautifully damp, and the conversation he’d wrongly assumed they _wouldn’t_ have to have.

Clint shrugs and reaches for his shirt. “I was helping your mom bring down some of the presents she and your dad’d stashed in their room,” he says conversationally. His voice is smooth, but his movements aren’t; they jerk and stutter, almost mechanical. “She asked a couple questions about how long we’d been dating and whatever, then mentioned how she’d like to see you married one of these days.” He raises his head just long enough to catch Phil’s eyes. “Between that and Sam’s ‘ring on it’ joke, I—kinda put it together.”

Phil nods, vaguely, but finds too soon that the words kind of—escape him. He watches Clint standing there, his shirt on but open, his belt undone and hanging, and he tries to formulate a sentence. He can’t, though. No, as much as his ears are burning—because of _course_ his mother would’ve slipped the same comment she’s made for the last fifteen years into her conversation with Clint—he can’t force his words into any semblance of order.

Clint falls silent, too, and Phil’s reminded suddenly of the couple across from them on the plane. They’d both been his parents’ age, maybe older, gray-haired and obviously married. A few times during the flight, he’d caught the woman smiling as he and Clint’d bickered about clue twenty-eight in the airline crossword puzzle. Eventually, Clint’d excused himself to use the tiny airplane bathroom—“Wanna join me?” he’d teased, and Phil’d rolled his eyes—and the woman’d leaned across the aisle.

“You’re lucky, you know,” she’d commented, and Phil’d pulled his eyes up from the still-incomplete crossword. Her smile’d been warm, but almost calculated, like she’d spent the last hour waiting to speak those very words. “Thirty-seven years later and my husband _still_ won’t spend Christmas with my family.”

“I can hear you,” her husband’d grumbled from behind his Jeffrey Deaver novel.

His wife’d ignored him, proof that they had indeed been married for thirty-plus years. “You’re lucky with yours.”

Phil’d smiled politely, unsure exactly what more he could offer the conversation, until he’d realized the woman was raising her eyebrows. Waiting for a reply, he’d recognized, so he’d cleared his throat and said, “Thank you. But, ah, Clint and I aren’t married. We’re just—together.”

“Oh!” she’d exclaimed, and Phil’d thought for a half-second she might’ve been appropriately embarrassed until she’d asked, “Is it legal where you’re from?”

He’d frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Getting married. Is it legal in your state?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Then you should give it a chance!” She’d beamed like she’d just informed Phil of the meaning of life, and Phil’d shifted uncomfortably. A few nearby passengers glanced over to catch the rest of the conversation. He’d forced himself to keep smiling. “A good couple like you,” the woman’d pressed, either oblivious to Phil’s discomfort or unbothered by it, “should give marriage a chance.”

Beside her, her husband’d sighed and lowered his book. “Leave the man alone, Edie,” he’d said.

“I just think—” 

“Leave him alone.”

When Clint’d returned a few minutes later, Phil’d had his head down, eyes fixed but unfocused on another clue in the crossword puzzle. He’d felt off-balance from the conversation, uncommonly awkward because a well-meaning stranger’d shoved her nose into his business. He hadn’t really thought of _marrying_ Clint before, even with everything that’d happened at the office in the last few months, and he’d been convinced the woman was simultaneously rude and crazy.

Now, he wonders whether she didn’t see whatever it is his whole _family_ sees, something he’s been blind to until right this very minute.

He glances over at where Clint’s still standing in the middle of the room, his belt now fastened but his shirt still mostly-open. There’s something distant in the way he holds himself, something lost in his expression, and Phil immediately hates it. He hates that there’re still things that can lock Clint inside himself, and he hates that he’s powerless to _stop_ it.

“Clint,” he says, and the way his own voice catches surprises him, “I—”

“We do or we don’t,” Clint interrupts. His voice is non-committal, almost aggressively casual, and Phil presses his lips together at the sound. He watches the studious way Clint does up the buttons on his shirt, the way his eyes never lift from the task at hand. But he stays quiet, so Clint shrugs. “I mean, just ‘cause your family wants it doesn’t mean we should want it,” he adds. “And there’s no use turning something great into something miserable ‘cause of a wedding that might never happen. Right?”

Phil snorts something he hopes is a laugh and, slowly, shakes his head. “Oh ye of little faith,” he jokes. It’s only a stall, though, a way to fill the silence while he closes the distance between them, and his fingers catch Clint’s more than they catch his last couple buttons. Clint stills like a spooked animal, a deer in headlights, and takes an inordinately long time to raise his eyes.

“I like what we have,” he says quietly.

“Me too,” Phil replies, and he holds onto Clint’s fingers for a lot longer than is strictly necessary.

But the thought stays with Phil through the rest of dressing, through heading down the stairs, through helping corral children into cars for the ride to the church. They bundle together in the rental car, but Phil can’t shake the spooked way Clint’d watched him at the end of their conversation, or the weird tension in the bottom of his stomach. The snow comes down in fat, lazy clumps, coating the world in a fresh blanket of white. It clings to their coats and hair in the church parking lot, flutters to the floor when they shake it off in the church foyer, and Phil smiles as he brushes a few flakes out of Clint’s hair.

Clint smiles, and it replaces the tension in Phil’s belly with something else entirely. And if his family notices the way they stand there, snowy and smiling, they certainly don’t say anything.

The Christmas Eve service at the little country church is always packed to capacity, and they squeeze into the hard wooden pews like a family of clowns in their tiny car. Phil’s sandwiched between Paul and Clint, and he and his brother-in-law fall into a conversation about the taxation of capital gains until Clint groans, “It’s _Christmas_ , Phil,” and they all end up laughing. The organ’s first chords break up their mirth, though it’s still caught in their eyes and their smiles.

The service is the same as every year, meandering through the lessons and Christmas carols Phil memorized when he was in grade school, and Phil finds himself focusing not on the pastor but on Clint. Clint, who fumbles with the hymnbook because he only knows half the songs, whose voice is low but strong and soothing, and who plays tic-tac-toe and hangman on the back of Jackson’s offering envelope until Phil’s mother shifts around in front of them and shoots them both a dirty look. Clint feigns a pout, Phil works not to laugh at him, and on the other side of Paul, Amy smiles knowingly.

The pastor talks about Christmas as a time of light, about allowing hope and faith to permeate the darkest nights of the year, and Phil listens until he finds himself thinking about Clint’s question from the other night. Having Christmas with his family is like the light in the sermon, chasing out the shadows that could’ve otherwise taken him over. It’s a light he’s never lived without, a beacon he’s followed his whole life. 

He likes to think maybe it can permeate outward and chase away some of Clint’s shadows, too.

The sermon ends, the offering is gathered, and then the center candle in the advent wreath is lit and its light distributed throughout the sanctuary. Sam hoists Clara onto her hip and confiscates her candle, Earl and Ernie are swiftly instructed to share _one_ between the two of them, and then the lights are dimming for “Silent Night.” Phil knows the song by heart, but Clint fumbles with his hymnal again, and there they stand: pitched into darkness, but still surrounded by light.

Somehow, in that sanctuary, Phil’s twenty-two again, young and unable to spell out all the things he believes. The last organ chords echo away, and he’s lifted by the singing of the entire congregation, a lulling murmur of words that reminds him more of a whisper than a song. He should be singing, too, soaring through the middle verses with everyone else.

He’s not.

Instead, he’s watching Clint, his lips moving so subtly that it’s almost in silent prayer. His face is lit by the candlelight—his own, and Phil’s, and the hundred other candles burning in unison—and every flicker finds a new crease to illuminate. Shadows are cast, chased away, and recast in the dark.

Somewhere in the middle of the verse, Clint raises his eyes from the hymnbook and catches Phil watching. For a half-second, Phil expects an eye-roll and a snorted non-laugh, something that’ll turn into a tease as soon as they’re out of church. But instead, Clint smiles—warm and bright, a smile like the flame from a candle—and leans closer. Their arms press together, then their shoulders, and Phil switches which hand the candle’s in so he can touch the small of Clint’s back.

Touch it, and then hold him there, through the last verse.

There are a thousand things to believe in, this time of year or any other. Phil’s not sure about 998 of them, but he’s sure about two:

His family, and Clint.

Or maybe, he thinks, those are only one thing, combining like candlelight and radiating ever outward.

He spreads his fingers against Clint’s back, and Clint smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> The Coulson family consists of the following members:
> 
> Amelia (Amy) Coulson-Mitchell, and her husband Paul Mitchell, are both employed at the same bank. They have two children: Westley (15) and Jackson (12).
> 
> Jennifer (Jenny) Nicolas is a pastry chef, and her husband, Alec Nicolas, is a professor. They live in Chicago. Jenny has three step-children: Carolina (18), Elijah (E.J.) (17), and Penelope (Penny) (14). She and Alec also have twins: Earl and Ernest (Ernie) (8).
> 
> Samantha (Sam) Wright, and her husband Joseph Wright, Senior, run Joe’s family farm. They have four children: Joseph Junior (Joey) (13), William (Will) (11), Shannon (9), and Clara (4).
> 
> Phil’s parents are Elizabeth and Craig Coulson.


End file.
